Dubai police chief says Canadian official informed him of the arrest in July, though Ottawa officials say the claim is 'baseless', the Canadian daily The Globe and Mail reports.

Canada has denied allegations that it had arrested a suspect in the Dubai assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Canadian daily The Globe and Mail reported on Wednesday.

Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim reportedly told The Globe and Mail that a senior Canadian security official informed him of an arrest of one of the suspects in July, who told Tamim at the time not to release the information to media.

According to a report in a United Arab Emirates newspaper, the Al-Itihad, Tamim said the alleged detainee is connected to another main suspect, who was caught on surveillance footage with al-Mabhouh inside an elevator.

A week earlier, Tamim - who is in charge of the investigation into the January murder - had announced that the suspect was arrested in a "Western" state, without naming the country.

According to the Canadian report, Ottawa is bewildered by Tamim's allegations and some Canadian officials believe Dubai is simply looking to embarrass Canada amid an ongoing row over airport rights.

One official in Canada's national-security establishment called the police chief's claim "baseless."

Dubai authorities have used closed-circuit television footage to identify suspects in the killing. They say the assassination was most probably carried out by a large hit squad from Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.

The murder of the Hamas official sparked international outrage, as citizens from several nations - including Germany, Ireland and France - had their identities stolen by the perpetrators, who traveled to the UAE to carry out the murder.

In June, suspected Israeli intelligence agent Uri Brodsky was arrested in the Polish capital Warsaw on a German arrest warrant for alleged involvement in passport fraud in relation to the case.

Brodsky, the first individual arrested in connection with the killing, was extradited to Germany and released on bail in August.